So Tired!

TwentyTen

First let me apologize for this rant. I haven't the strength at the moment to contain it, lol.

It's my job. It's exhausting, very stressful, and draining. By the end of the day I am wiped out. Last night for example, supposed to be a 10 hour shift, but a last minutes crisis made me miss dinner and kept me another hour. Started the day at 6am as usual, and the day was full of pressure and panic , and problems galore that I was responsible for resolving on the spot. So , I got home last night by 8:30pm or so, desperately hungry. Had a bowl of chicken tortilla soup, and then did my 40 minutes of exercise, .. ....yawning the whole way through it. :yawn:

I do what I can to keep my energy up. Nibble on healthy snacks at every opportunity. Trying to get something in my tummy every few hours, but that is often difficult as I can get whisked away and buried in some crisis at anytime that may take hours to resolve. But I do try,... have nuts and seeds, and cheese and veggies at the ready .. when I can get to them. Also, making an effort to keep the water consumption up as well.

So tonight, I almost got stuck late again, but thankfully was able to wrap things up enough to get out of there by 5. However, it was a day of madness, again, every bleeding minute of it brimming over with stresses. Every second I get, I try to breathe.. relax, deep breaths.. stretches, anything I can do to keep the tension at bay. It's just too much! The last couple hours of the day I just could have laid my head down and slept, eyes tired, brain fried.

My days often start off energetically , but as the day gets late, and the week gets late, it really catches up with me.

Yes , I want to stretch out on this couch soooo bad, fall asleep to some bad TV, and stay asleep for a good ten hours, but I refuse to let this damn job keep me from getting my exercise in. Yes the exercise can be invigorating once I get rolling.. but really... it just seems wrong that I am literally yawning through it !!! :yawn: :yawn: :yawn:

So glad it is the weekend. With any luck I don't get called in on a Saturday. It could happen. Still weekends are not exactly rest time either. Single mom, more than enough errands and chores to tend to before the next week hits.

Maybe I need more calories. I put sedentary into my settings, because it is primarily a desk job, but somedays I am running quite a bit. Does mental stress itself burn calories? I do wonder . If so, then i surely need to eat more. I just hate to mess with the numbers since I am not even a month in yet and am kind of waiting to see how it's going..

Well, my apologies for the venting... I know alot of us work very hard and have hectic lives and schedules. Generally I do not like to whine, and overall am fairly tough. This week has really knocked the wind out of me tho', and this job is not going to lighten up anytime soon. :frown:

Just hate that I am facing another workout that I will be yawning through! Still I am going to tough it out, guzzle a big bottle of water and get it done.

If anyone has any magic bullets for super sonic energy, I am all ears. Just please don't recommend caffeine as I have recently given it up, and it was a hell of a struggle.

So, onward to my exercise, yawns and all.

And thanks for listening.

kwardklinck

I had this problem in the beginning. The more I ate right and exercised the better I felt. I sometimes have to put in late hours but I just do my exercise when I get home, then eat dinner, then take a nice warm bath, then go to bed to read for a little bit. It's a very relaxing habit and I sleep well at night. If you need a little nap in the evening, maybe 30 minutes to an hour before you exercise, do it. I used to nap every day after work. Now I find I don't need to anymore because I've slimmed down and I just feel better physically. If you have more energy in the morning and can work in a mini-workout before work, that may be better for you. A healthy lifestyle can help you better cope with the stress of your job. Don't let anything stand in the way of you taking care of yourself.

muth3rluvx2

Jane,

My best friend (who also uses MFP, but she's farrrr to busy to use it as a social networking tool, unfortunately!) swears by meditation. She too has a very long and very demanding job. She will find a way to get in a 2 minute meditation at her desk several times a day (even though she's rarely there!!). She also meditates before bed, first thing in teh morning and on weekends. For a woman who has been getting 3 hours of sleep a night consistently for almost 2 years straight, she's surprisingly sane and mentally/emotionally/psychologically stable and yet agile. Amazing!

Being ADHD myself, I struggle with meditation tremendously. Maybe someday - otherwise I'd offer some tips on how to get to that point... perhaps others who are adept can help if that's something you chose to try. :-)

Take care of yourself and get a good night's sleep tonight!

sonjavon

First let me say - I'm sorry that you're having to work so hard and so many hours. Stress is a killer!

I took a peek at your profile... are you on hormone replacement therapy? Is it possible that your hormones are out of whack?

I'm not one to take anything to give me energy... but I used to work a job that sometimes required me to work 17 hour days - I found that 5 hour energy was a great help. It gave me a boost without making me feel jittery. BUT - make sure that you don't take it 2 hours before you want to go to bed! LOL!

The other thing is... is it possible to get your workout first thing in the morning? I worked with a friend who went to the gym every morning at 4AM. I told her once that I didn't know how she did it. Her response was, "If I wait til I'm out of work - I'm too tired. That time first thing in the morning when I'm well-rested and feeling my best is for ME... I'll be damned if I give it to this place" (We hated where we worked). She had a point... it's a reason why I work out in the morning... and I'm a stay at home mom. It's not that my family doesn't deserve the "best me" - it's that I'm a better me when I take the time to do good things for myself.

DG82

I am a newbie at this as well so I can relate... I also work a desk job 8-5 (Mon-Fri), I'm single, no kids/on my own. I just moved into my first house a few months ago so now this is all on me and I'm just adjusting to being on my own and fending for myself really. I am really big on schedules and work is really stressful and exhausting (ha I would have never thought that w/a desk job!). Anyway, I have pretty much never been big on exercise, other than I have always like to go walking and just enjoy nature, fresh air, etc. Over the past two weeks that I have begun to try and change my usual schedule I have already noticed a HUGE change. I only get about 5 or so hours of sleep most nights (which is horrible I know) so that left me SO tired for the first few hours at work and then even moreso when I got home from work. However, since I have begun to workout for at least 20-30 mins most nights now my energy has gone wayyy up and I'm not completely exhausted all the time! I'm completely amazed! I now actually have begun looking forward to my workout b/c it's a bit of stress reliever for me where I am not thinking about anything else other than "how far can I push myself tonight in my workout." If you get excited about exercise it will make it all the easier to approach and get through it. I have been riding a stationary bike after dinner and I gotta say, ok the first 5-10 mins are ROUGH, not gonna lie!! But once I hit a certain time my body gets into and picks up (I also listen to my Ipod which makes it much more fun so that's a suggestion!!). Today I gave it a rest b/c I shoveled not only this morning for 20 mins, but also 30 mins right after work and then made my dinner afterwards. I burned a pretty decent amount of cals w/all that hard work and my body IS already sore since I've been on the bike everyday this week, but tomorrow morning I'm gonna try my hardest to workout first thing after breakfast... that way no excuses to put it off and let it slide!! I wish you well on this journey we are all trying to find our way through, it's def. not easy but I think in the end our struggles will help us to be stronger not only physically, but in so many other ways as well!! :-)

muth3rluvx2

I am a newbie at this as well so I can relate... I also work a desk job 8-5 (Mon-Fri), I'm single, no kids/on my own. I just moved into my first house a few months ago so now this is all on me and I'm just adjusting to being on my own and fending for myself really. I am really big on schedules and work is really stressful and exhausting (ha I would have never thought that w/a desk job!). Anyway, I have pretty much never been big on exercise, other than I have always like to go walking and just enjoy nature, fresh air, etc. Over the past two weeks that I have begun to try and change my usual schedule I have already noticed a HUGE change. I only get about 5 or so hours of sleep most nights (which is horrible I know) so that left me SO tired for the first few hours at work and then even moreso when I got home from work. However, since I have begun to workout for at least 20-30 mins most nights now my energy has gone wayyy up and I'm not completely exhausted all the time! I'm completely amazed! I now actually have begun looking forward to my workout b/c it's a bit of stress reliever for me where I am not thinking about anything else other than "how far can I push myself tonight in my workout." If you get excited about exercise it will make it all the easier to approach and get through it. I have been riding a stationary bike after dinner and I gotta say, ok the first 5-10 mins are ROUGH, not gonna lie!! But once I hit a certain time my body gets into and picks up (I also listen to my Ipod which makes it much more fun so that's a suggestion!!). Today I gave it a rest b/c I shoveled not only this morning for 20 mins, but also 30 mins right after work and then made my dinner afterwards. I burned a pretty decent amount of cals w/all that hard work and my body IS already sore since I've been on the bike everyday this week, but tomorrow morning I'm gonna try my hardest to workout first thing after breakfast... that way no excuses to put it off and let it slide!! I wish you well on this journey we are all trying to find our way through, it's def. not easy but I think in the end our struggles will help us to be stronger not only physically, but in so many other ways as well!! :-)

Try working out BEFORE breakfast.
1) you'll utilize the cals you consume more efficiently & effectively
2) you won't risk cramping up.

:-)

Congrats on the house!! Lots of work and can be LOTS of fun too!

TwentyTen

Thank you all for your input, and for suffering through my whining. I am open to all suggestions of course. i actually did make it through my exercise routine without yawning tonight, and it was a little energizing overall. Let some of the frustration out!

kwardklinck , The napping after work idea.. I have considered it. Usually I am a bit anxious to get dinner on the table, and if I were to nap after dinner, ha, the odds of me getting back up are pretty slim.

muth3rluvx2, The meditation idea is not a bad one, and I could squeeze in 2 or 3 little ones. I do manage actually to sort of do that I think. I generally handle the stress and mental strain quite well overall, but occasionally it will get the best of me. Three hours a sleep a night? Ouch, I cannot believe that'd be good for anyone! I have done that though alot because those hours are the only time I get free, and don;t always want to sleep it away. But yes, I WILL be sleeping in tomorrow.

sonjavon, The hormone issue, who knows. I mean mine may still be out of whack, but since i am almost 6 months after surgery, I would hope thats not still true. I do not take and hormone replacement, I refuse to. Morning exercise would be great i think, IF I could manage to get myself up that early. Only one bathroom in the house, and a teenager who needs time in there in the morning. It would have to be 4am for sure. I am not a morning person, but I may one day brave that a try...maybe,lol.

DG82. I do get excited about my exercise, and I look forward to it. That is why I get so frustrated as I feel the day beating me down to the point where I don't know if I can manage. Like tonight, it was a bit of a release, but I didn't have it in me to go as long as I would have liked.

Yes, all this effort to do ourselves good, does make us stronger. I am a very strong person overall, and it is my body i am working on strengthening now. It just gets frustrating when the mental strain seems to take a physical toll . I am afraid the stress levels will hinder the weight loss effort too. i am trying my damnedest to take care of me. So many of us working so hard and not getting enough sleep , just seems wrong, we are human after all. I am tough, but I am not made of steel.

I appreciate everyone's suggestions , and simply taking the time to give a fig! Thank you. :flowerforyou:


Oh someone said a bath. I LOVE baths, cannot remember last time I had one. I am going to make time for one over the weekend. Complete with candles and music and a good book.